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I have a great idea for a golf tournament. Let’s invite all the so-called teaching gurus to a 72 hole stroke play event and call it “The Guru Invitational”. Like the Masters, we’ll have to make it fairly difficult to qualify for the field. After all, we only want those recognized as true golfing geniuses, the men and women who have figured out a technique and a mental attitude for every possible situation, and have earned a nice living dispensing such knowledge to the masses.
So who qualifies to hold the title of “guru”, and thus earns an entry into our elite field? Well, let’s start with anyone who teaches Tour players, be it the PGA Tour, the Senior Tour, the LPGA Tour, or any other tour of note. The only thing the teacher needs is a note of verification signed by their player (and notarized). Next, we’ll have anyone who has their name on a Golf School, a Golf Academy, a Golf Learning Center, or any other such species. All of the Top 100 Teachers in America certainly qualify, and any former PGA Section or National Teacher of the Year is definitely in. If you’ve written and published a book or video and sold more than 10 copies of either (to other than your students) then you, too, are teeing it up.
Now, not just anyone can be a spectator at our little event. Only those who have actually taken and paid for a lesson from one or more of the teacher-players will be allowed entrance onto the grounds. There will be no gallery ropes, and the teachers will play with microphones attached so that the gallery can hear their on-course strategies.
Spectators will be encouraged to bring their video cameras to tape their favorite teachers performing the swings and strokes they teach.
Once the tournament is over, it’s time to have a Teaching Summit, where something other than theories would be discussed. Imagine that! An open forum about Real Golf, under real pressure, played by the men and women who supposedly know the most about the game and all its intricacies. Teachers talking about their own games. I would definitely pay to see that.
It’s all just a dream, I guess. Who expects their teachers to play anymore, anyway? No one, I guess, because even those teachers who could play in the past at some point just stopped. Very few of these “gurus” seems to want to tee it up in competition anymore. What I want to know is, how do you learn about any part of the game, the strike of the ball, the short game, the mental game of handling pressure situations, if you never play in a tournament to test your ideas . If you change the way you teach over a period of time, just where do these changes come from? When was the last time one of the big teaching kahunas was spied beating balls by himself on the range? And every player knows that the range is only a testing ground; the proving ground is on the course, when the results matter, when caring about what happens creates the sensation of pressure.
Teachers don’t have to be great players. But shouldn’t they at least be decent? Why would you work with someone who was too embarrassed about his playing ability to bring it out for public view? How can a relatively healthy teacher exempt himself from playing competitive golf? Too busy? Every good teacher is busy, and there are plenty, though not nearly enough, who take the time and make the effort to practice what they preach and take it out to test it under pressure.
You see, it is my belief that a golf instructor has an absolute obligation to his or her students to play golf against his peers, to take his ideas out into the real world where theory very often falls apart and necessity becomes the mother of invention. How does a teacher know how to instruct a student as to the differences between practicing and playing if he never does either? How does he know how it feels to hit a certain shot with a certain technique unless he’s actually tried it and been successful at it when it really counted? How does he know which thoughts bring about the desired results? How many thoughts are too many? How do conscious thoughts change over into images and feelings which don’t clog the mind and allow the body to function smoothly and efficiently?
The key word here is “feel”. Take a video of a swing, stick it into a computer program, pepper it with arcs and angles and plane lines and what do you have? A lot of information to be interpreted (somewhat like statistics) as the teacher sees fit, but certainly no first-hand knowledge of what the movements feel like and what needs to be thought to accomplish them. When did it become accepted that it was O.K. for a teacher not to be able to perform what it is he’s teaching? Forgive me, but I just don’t get it.
At this point in time I’m struggling with my game. I’m in a slump. I just got back from playing in the Erie Charity Classic, a 36 hole tournament with a field consisting of 40 Tour pros (including Paul Azinger), and 50 of the best club and mini-tour pros on the East Coast. I shot 73-69, 2-under par, but I bogied the last two holes to miss a check and probably lose my exemption for next year. And you know something? I wanted to bite the cover off the ball when I walked off #18. I played a practice round, I hit balls for hours after each round, I went out and grinded my ass off, as it turned out, for seemingly nothing. But I’ll tell you, what I learn from these playing experiences makes me a better golfer and a better teacher every single time. Because I’m playing with what I teach. When I stand up on the first tee and have that feeling in my stomach like I want to throw up, and when I’m standing over a four-footer with my heart pounding wondering why I get myself into these situations, it comes to me that this is what it’s all about. It’s the heart and soul of the game, playing and performing under pressure. It’s not the latest swing theory as purported by someone who has never played in a tournament, or who for no good reason has failed to enter any sort of competition for 10 or 20 years.
So am I just kvetching or do I have some point to make here? I always like to be positive, so I guess what I’m trying to do is to encourage all teachers who still have the ability to swing the club to start swinging. Set aside your guru status for a while each day and practice. Then enter a tournament or two and go tee it up. And all you “sport psychologists”, get out to a real competition and play a little golf where everyone can see your score, then tell me how well you were able to “just focus on your target and swing”. I’ll bet that when a couple of shots in a row don’t even sniff the target, (even though you were focusing so hard on it), that , uh-oh, here comes a swing thought.
I’m not trying to be holier-than-thou about this. But the fact is that playing golf is hard. Competing is hard, on the mind and the body. Teaching is not easy by any means, but teachers owe it to their students to make the effort to experience the struggle that their students go through after every lesson. It has often been said that “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” I will continue to do everything in my power to keep myself from falling into that category, and I know that there are many other player-teachers who feel the same way. My hope is that more of our capable teachers will follow the example that we are trying so hard to set. Golf truly is the game of a lifetime: it’s never too late to get back into it.
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